Art
The success and failure of Dora Maar
GIRIDHAR KHASNIS
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The fascinating narrative behind Picasso's "Dora Maar au Chat", which recently went for $95.2 million at Sotheby's.
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Portrait of a muse: "Dora Maar au Chat". Photo: AP
Picasso is unique, but, since he is a man and not a god, it is our responsibility to judge the value of this uniqueness.
John Berger,
The Success and Failure of Picasso
THIS is a two-act play which begins in early 1936 and culminates on May 3, 2006. The hero was born Pablo Ruiz, but later adopted his mother's more distinguished maiden name, Picasso. And went on to become the most important artist of the 20th century.
Sharing the spotlight with him is the beautiful Yugoslav photographer, Henriette Theodora Markovitch alias Dora Maar. There are several other women who will come and go on the dramatic stage, which bears the backdrop of some passionate and tempestuous relationships, and also a wicked war with rabble-rousing bombs marking both the physical landscape and a creative canvas. And just before the curtain call, the sounding thud of an auctioneer's hammer which will shock the art world, but cannot stir a little black cat which watches the fun silently, without a purr or a meow.
Act One: Paris, January 1936
The 54-yearold Picasso, already a worldwide celebrity, is sitting on the terrace of the Café Les Deux Magots in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, with his friend, Paul Éluard, the well-known French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement. He sees the 28-year-old Dora Maar and persuades Éluard to introduce the beautiful lady to him. Maar, who was born to a father of Croatian origin and a French mother, had grown up in Argentina, can speak Spanish fluently, so Picasso is even more enchanted. Picasso is already in a relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter. Nearly 10 years ago, the 45-year-old Spaniard had noticed a 17-year-young Marie-Thérèse in front of the Paris store Lafayette, and approached her saying, "My name is Picasso. I would like to paint you." She not only became his model for some of his most sensual portraits but also remained his secret mistress till the birth of their daughter, named Maya, in 1935 when their relationship came into the open.
Thus, in 1936, Dora Maar replaces Marie-Thérèse in Picasso's heart and canvas. She also shares his political concerns. When a devastated Picasso sets out to show his anger at the plundering of the little Basque village in northern Spain in April 1937, she assists him with the execution of a monumental 11.5 x 25.5 feet mural.
Maar's own features also appear in the painting. She also produces the only step-by-step photo-documentary of the work-in-progress in his workshop on the Rue des Grands Augustins. "Guernica", eventually, becomes the century's most memorable anti-war image.
Many highs and lows
Picasso's relationship with Dora Maar lasts for almost a decade. It is an affair of several highs and many lows. Maar — herself an exhibited artist, a poet and well-known photographer — is loved, admired, but also shamed and disgraced by Picasso. She is portrayed sometimes as a beautiful lady, and often in a hostile manner — as melancholic, and even as an insane woman with a contorted face, unnatural eyes, and wild postures. While admitting that painting Dora was his way of dealing with the stress of the war, Picasso also uses his art as a window to direct his frustration towards her. He even likens Maar's allure and temperament to that of an "Afghan cat" — an apparent reference to feminine wiles and sexual aggression. One of his canvases is titled "Dora Maar au Chat" (Dora Maar with Cat).
Act Two: New York
Sotheby's evening sale of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York has listed "Dora Maar au Chat" as one of its prime attractions. Not seen in public for more than 40 years, the 50.5 x 37.5 inches canvas, painted in 1941 at the height of her tempestuous relationship with Picasso, has understandably generated a lot of excitement among prospective buyers, scholars and the artist's children, Claude and Maya, who have found evidence of this great portrait recorded in Picasso's archives.
In a spirited run-up to the event, David Norman, Chairman of Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Art Department Worldwide, writes: "Dora Maar au Chat presents the artist's most mysterious and challenging mistress regally posed three-quarter length in a large wooden chair with a small black cat perched behind her in both an amusing and menacing attitude. The faceted planes of her body and richly layered surface of brushstrokes impart a monumental and sculptural quality to this dazzling portrait. The painting is also remarkable for its brilliance of colour and the complex and dense patterning of the model's dress. The powerful figure is set in a dramatic, yet simple setting composed of a vertiginously inclined plane of wooden floorboards and shallow interior space that is arranged in a manner reminiscent of Picasso's earliest manipulations of space in a Cubist manner. This is a thrilling painting to view and an incredible opportunity to bring to the market."
The first recorded owner of "Dora Maar au Chat" is the Surrealist dealer Pierre Colle, who was related professionally with Picasso in the years prior to the war. By 1947 the painting had passed on to the collection of Leigh Block, the famed Chicago industrialist. Block later sold it through the Paris-based dealer Heinz Berggruen to the present owner, the Gidwitz family of Chicago, where it has remained in relative obscurity for the last four decades.
Exceeding expectation
The painting is estimated to be sold for around $50 million. While Sotheby's is hoping for 70-plus, Tobias Meyer, the auctioneer, would be surprised if the closing price passed the $65 million mark. The hectic bidding which ensues takes them both and the rest of the art world by surprise. When the hammer finally descended on the first Wednesday of May, "Dora Maar au Chat" had been sold at a closing price of US $95, 216, 000, making it the world's second-most expensive painting ever bought at auction. It is next only to Picasso's own 1905 masterpiece "Boy with a Pipe", which went under the hammer at a New York auction for $104.2 million in May 2004.
The buyer who took home "Dora Maar au Chat" prefers to be anonymous, but is identified as a remotely seated man in his mid-40s, wearing a blue blazer and a cream-coloured shirt, and sounding like a Russian. This guy, who reportedly held the paddle no.1340 rather clumsily, laps up not just the Dora Maar but also a 1883 Monet seascape for $5 million and a 1978 Chagall biblical scene, "Paradise", for $2.5 million, spending a total of $102.7 million on a single day!
Picasso's relationship with Maar gradually deteriorated in sense and substance, and by 1943, the 61-year-old painter had become attracted to 27-year-old artist Françoise Gilot. Picasso and Éluard sent Maar (who was given to severe mood swings and mental tension) to their friend, the psychiatrist Jacques Lacan, who treated her. In April 1944, Picasso left her a 1915 drawing as a good-bye gift. He also gave her some still-lifes and a house at Ménerbes in Provence.
Picasso married neither Maar nor Gilot. He was married only twice during his lifetime; first to Russian dancer Olga Koklova in 1918 and then (after Olga's death) in 1961, to Jacqueline Roque. Marie-Thérèse committed suicide in 1977 years after Picasso's death; as did Roque, in 1986.
Picasso and God
Maar, being sterile, did not produce any offspring. Gilot mothered two children, Claude in 1947 and Paloma in 1949 but walked out of the relationship in the autumn of 1953, the only woman to leave Picasso of her own will and accord.
Picasso, who never visited Spain after 1934, died on April 8, 1973 at the age of 91. Maar outlived him by almost a quarter of a century. By the time she breathed her last on July 16,1997, at the age of 90, she had become a religious recluse, painting and writing poetry behind a veil of fiercely guarded privacy.
Today, Dora Maar is remembered as a model for some of Picasso's most fascinating paintings, and also as his discarded muse. One also recalls that she is the same woman who had once remarked: "After Picasso, only God".
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